Category: Movie Dramas (Page 179 of 188)

With 7 days ’til Christmas, a publicist sent to me…

December 18, 2007 /

…The House Without A Christmas Tree.

If you can trust the box art for this particular DVD, then we’ve finally been gifted with the long-awaited release of a cherished holiday classic; as for me, I wasn’t familiar with the film…or if I once was, my memories of it didn’t stick with me for the long haul…but having now watched it, I can say that there’s probably a fair amount of truth in that advertising.

Addie (Lisa Lucas) is 10 years old and really, really, really wants a Christmas tree; unfortunately, her dad, James (Jason Robards), refuses to have one in his house. No, he’s not being a jerk…well, not intentionally, anyway. He’s still mourning the death of his wife, who died within weeks of Addie’s birth, and he readily associates the holidays with how much his wife loved that time of the year; unfortunately, he also associates his daughter with his wife, and it continues to haunt him that, once upon a time, he wished that she’d died instead of her mother. As such, the Christmas season is generally a pretty low-key affair around their house…to say the least. But when Addie wins a Christmas tree in a contest at school – through a method her father taught her, no less – and James still throws a fit over having a tree in his house, resulting in Addie running off in tears, one is forced to wonder if father and daughter will ever be able to reconcile.

Say, this sure sounds like a merry Christmas movie, doesn’t it? Well, don’t worry: it wouldn’t be a holiday classic if things didn’t eventually turn out all right…but, then, you probably already figured that.

Robards’ performance is appropriately gruff when he’s dealing with Addie while being just sad enough for us to realize that, yeah, that’s a major emotional rollercoaster the guy’s on, and who’s to say we wouldn’t react similarly in that situation? Mildred Natwick plays Addie’s grandmother (and James’s mom) in a manner that will no doubt strike a chord in many of us, the way she walks that tightrope between wanting to make her granddaughter happy without damaging the relationship with her own child. Lisa Lucas is…well, she’s a kid. She’s an average 10-year-old little girl. She was never destined to win an Emmy for her work, but she does well enough.

“The House Without A Christmas Tree” was made in 1972, and it shows, but that’s a good thing, actually; the reason it shows is that it was filmed on video tape, and the result is that it tends to feel less like a movie and more like a play. There really aren’t many different locales involved – the family’s house, the school, a store, and another nearby family’s house – and the brief outdoor shots could easily be left out if anyone wanted to make this into a stage play. You may also recall that 1972 was the year “The Waltons” premiered, so don’t be surprised when you tune in to find that A) the story takes place in the 1940s, B) the goings-on are, by and large, pretty mundane by today’s standards, and C) there’s as much heartbreak as there is happiness.

But, like I said, things turn out all right in the end, and that’s what counts.

Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External Movie DVDs, External Movies, External TV, Movie Dramas, Movie DVDs, Movies, Reviews, TV, TV Dramas, TV DVDs

When bad movies attack

December 12, 2007 /

The red band trailer for the 2008 comedy “Strange Wilderness” has finally hit the web, and though Adam Sandler’s production company, Happy Madison, is proudly mentioned in the opening seconds, it definitely feels more like “Grandma’s Boy” than “50 First Dates.” Of course, Sandler himself doesn’t appear in the film (as is common with most of the Happy Madison projects), which means that it’s probably going to suck.

The film follows the crew of a wilderness-themed TV program as they go in search of Bigfoot in order to score better ratings, and while red band trailers usually show a comedy for what it really is (“Walk Hard” looks that much better because of its very own red band trailer), “Strange Wilderness” has got flop written all over it. It’s too bad, really, since the movie has a decent cast of comedy up-and-comers including Steve Zahn, Justin Long, Jonah Hill and Kevin Heffernan. Unfortunately, the latter two are hardly featured in the trailer. If Paramount were smart, they’d re-cut a new trailer featuring as much of Hill as they possibly can. The kid’s not only talented – he’s one of the most talked about up-and-comers in the industry right now.

Check out the worldwide premiere here, and then come back to tell us what you think.

External Movies, Movie Dramas, Movies, Trailers

“Tin Man”: Part One

December 3, 2007 /

Like most anyone over the age of 30, I grew up on a yearly diet of network showings of “The Wizard of Oz.” Loved the movie so much as a child that I read the book by L. Frank Baum when I was 11 or so. Someone who fits into such a category should instantly be wary of SciFi’s new miniseries “Tin Man,” right? Yet I’ve never viewed “Oz” as such a sacred cow that reworkings of the material are considered an outrage. If anything there’s a wealth of fantastic material that Baum created that hasn’t been adequately adapted into live action movies and/or TV. Yet as far back as the ‘70s musical “The Wiz,” the original story has been blatantly reworked into new forms. Even David Lynch took a bold, peculiar stab at it in 1990 with “Wild at Heart.” And “Tin Man” wants to have another go at it? Great, go for it – but count me as someone who’d still like to see a series of straightforward movie adaptations ala “Harry Potter” or “Narnia.” Indeed, 1985’s “Return to Oz” is probably more faithful to Baum’s vision than the classic Judy Garland film.

The producers of “Tin Man” certainly want to get on my good side by casting Zooey Deschanel (Trillian from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide” movie, amongst many other credits) as the lead character, DG. And bringing guys like Alan Cumming, Neal McDonough and Richard Dreyfuss onboard certainly doesn’t hurt. But casting aside, the story needed to be a good one.

Having only seen Part One of Three thus far, the results were mostly engaging. It’d be easy to write off “Tin Man” right away as having strayed too far from the source material, but as I viewed the first installment, it slowly seduced and pulled me in. It seems that one of its biggest strengths, in fact, is exactly how far it’s strayed from the original work. “Tin Man” seems to be less fantasy and more sci-fi. Rather than being an adaptation of Baum’s novel, it’s instead a piece that takes cues and iconography from the source material to set up its own brand new universe, referred to here as the O.Z. (the Outer Zone). Turns out that DG (Dorothy Gale) is actually the sister of Azkadellia (Kathleen Robertson), the O.Z.’s version of the Wicked Witch (although she seems to owe even more to “Narnia’s” White Witch). To protect DG from her sister, she was sent to live in our world under the care of a couple who were actually robots from the O.Z. As if her heritage isn’t enough of a departure, each other classic icon has been given a spin as well. McDonough’s Tin Man is actually a cop out for revenge for the killing of his family. The sequence where he’s released from an iron maiden of sorts – after having to endure years of viewing a repeated holographic depiction of the murder of his family – is chilling and effective. Cumming’s Glitch has a zipper on his head to mark the spot where valuable info was taken out (brains). Raw, the lion figure, is of a race that’s telepathic (this old school “Doctor Who” fan was reminded of the time sensitive Tharils from “Warriors’ Gate”). Dreyfuss’ drug-addled Mystic Man seemed even more of a clueless charlatan than anything out of the movies or books. The Munchkin city smacked of Endor and Ewoks. Yeah, “Tin Man” is getting its influence from material far outside of the work of L. Frank Baum.

The final half hour devolved into a lot of action and I’d need to give that section another once over before commenting. Truth be told, the first installment covered so much ground, that I can’t even begin to imagine where it’s all going if it keeps up at this pace. You know what “Tin Man’s” biggest disappointment thus far is? The winged monkeys, which just go to show that CGI can never replace little people in creepy makeup and costumes.

Movie Dramas, Movies, Pilots, TV, TV Action, TV Sci-Fi

Doc of the Day: “Hollywood Goes Gaming”

November 14, 2007 /

I’ve never been a real hardcore video game addict…well, not for any extended period of time, anyway. I had my fair share of obsessions once in awhile – first the arcade, then my trusty Intellivision, followed by brief stints with Nintendo and Xbox – but none of those lasted more than a few months before they were set aside. Kids today, though, they’re downright obsessed with the gaming, so when I first heard about the Starz documentary, “Hollywood Goes Gaming,” I thought, “Oh, man, this is totally not gonna hold my interest.”

I couldn’t have been more wrong. It was way better than I ever expected, offering a nicely done retrospective of the history of video games becoming movies and vice versa. For instance, Stephen Linsberg, writer / director of “Tron,” bemoans the fact that his film didn’t even receive an Academy Award for Best Special Effects, then admits that, at the time, the industry felt that he’d “cheated” by using computers for his effects. It’s amusing that the doc launches from its discussion of “Tron” and how Mattel licensed the film for a video game, then fast-forwards to the present and observes how it’s a given that a film will have a video-game tie-in nowadays, using “Surf’s Up” as an example. Why’s that amusing? Both films start Jeff Bridges!

Would you believe there was once a licensing battle for a “Kramer vs. Kramer” video game? True. Everybody wanted a piece of the video game action, but the most enjoyable discussion here comes via archival interview footage with Spielberg about the legendarily bad “E.T.” video game for Atari, then cuts to current interview with a fellow who used to work for Atari, who says that Spielberg saw the test version of the game and said, “Gee, couldn’t you do something more like ‘Pac-Man’?” “And I thought, well, gee, couldn’t you do something more like ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’”? All snark aside, the game was such a colossal failure that Atari ended up with so many leftover copies that they buried a ton of them in a Mexican landfill. (I always thought that was an apocryphal story, but if so, Atari’s amused enough by it to claim it’s true.)

There’s also a nice bit about “Dragon’s Lair,” including an interview with creator Don Bluth (alas, the follow-up game, “Space Ace,” gets no love), along with an almost apologetic sequence about the “Super Mario Brothers.” From there, it’s onto the triple threat of the “Double Dragon,” “Street Fighter,” and “Mortal Kombat” flicks.

Inevitably, there’s conversation with Uwe Boll and Paul WS Anderson, with the latter proving the most entertaining. (I had no idea that, in answer to his critics, he offered to meet them in a boxing ring and fight them!) Clive Barker chimes in on his experiences in the industry, including his work on his own game, “Jericho,” and, of course, Shia LaBeouf gets interviewed because he’s the Michael Caine of his era, showing up in just about everything, though he looks like he was caught in the middle of a press tour, however, rather than having sat down for his interview like everyone else.

Kudos to Starz for these documentaries of theirs. They’re really doing a nice job of providing historical context rather than just having a bunch of talking heads blather on; in this case, we’re treated to interviews with the founders of Atari and Electronic Arts, the guys who were on the front lines of all these goings-on. Makes for a lot more interesting perspective than, say, a movie critic talking about how bad “Double Dragon” was.

Action Movies, Actors, Actresses, Doc of the Day, Documentaries, External Entertainment, External Movie DVDs, External Movies, External TV, Horror Movies, Movie Dramas, Movie DVDs, Movies, Reviews, TV

Scare of the Day: “Premature Burial” / “X – The Man with X-Ray Eyes”

October 9, 2007 /

Trying to put together a definitive box set of Roger Corman films would be a fool’s errand. Between the number of different studios he’s worked for over the years and the sheer volume of the man’s work as a director and producer, there’s just no way you could ever put together anything that could truly be called a definitive representation of his career. Still, give MGM credit for taking a shot at it with The Roger Corman Collection; at best, it’s still only a mixture of good, great, and utter dreck…but, then, that’s Roger Corman in a nutshell, anyway.

For the purposes of our Scare of the Day feature, we’ll look at two of the eight films within the set today, then hit up one more tomorrow. Today, however, has been officially declared Ray Milland Day at Premium Hollywood, which means that we’ll be tackling 1962’s “Premature Burial” and 1963’s “X – The Man with X-Ray Eyes.”

“Premature Burial” is based on a short story by Edgar Allen Poe, an author whose works were regularly plundered by Corman for his films. I say “plundered,” but I’m really only kidding; in truth, modern audiences would probably be way less familiar with Poe’s work if it hadn’t been for Corman’s adaptations of “House of Usher,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Raven,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” and “The Tomb of Ligeia.” For that alone, he deserves praise, even if he hasn’t always been 100% on the mark when transitioning the stories into films.

In the case of “Premature Burial,” unfortunately, I can’t make a comparison between the two, having never read the original short story, but I will say that Corman succeeds in putting together a creepy tale of Guy Carrell, a man who’s convinced that he suffers from catalepsy. If you’re not familiar with that particular malady, here’s the scoop: it’s a condition characterized by muscular rigidity, fixity of posture and decreased sensitivity to pain…and in the days before medical technology really took off, it wasn’t too hard for someone in the midst of a cataleptic seizure to be declared dead.

Carrell is in the midst of a full-on obsession with his possible catalepsy, to the point where he even breaks off a relationship with Emily Gault (Hazel Court) because he feels he can’t give it his all. She convinces him to give her a chance, however, and they end up married…if not necessarily happily. Carrell is sure that his father was buried alive while in the midst of a seizure, and to avoid any possibility of such a thing happening to him, he designs a crypt for himself that’s equal parts Rube Goldberg and Dr. Frink from “The Simpsons.” It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. Eventually, Emily convinces her husband to have his father’s remains exhumed, so he can see once and for all that it was a legitimate, peaceful death…and not to spoil it for you, but, um, that screen shot is of Carrell’s dad, and I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t look like a smile on his face. “Premature Burial” is an enjoyable Gothic horror flick, and while it’s gotten some rather unfair complaints over the years because Milland took the lead rather than Corman’s usual Poe go-to man, Vincent Price, there’s no question than our man Ray plays the role with all the intensity it requires.

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Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External Movie DVDs, External Movies, Horror Movies, Movie Dramas, Movie DVDs, Movies, Reviews, Scare of the Day

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